$89 for a Summer in China and $900 in 4 Days on GOG: Where to Sell Indie Games Besides Steam

Where to sell indie games besides Steam, and is it worth the effort? Right now Meltopia has $432,000 gross. How that result compares with other games, I broke down in the article on how much indie games make on Steam. When a game takes off like that, you immediately want to sell it everywhere else too. Over the summer and early autumn we tested three directions: the Chinese market, GOG and key stores. Here is what came of it, with numbers, including the ones you can laugh at.

China: a whole summer of work

We spent the whole summer on China. We translated the entire game, made a cover in Chinese and started writing to Chinese bloggers.

I talked about how we started in China in a video back in June: why we turned down a local agency, how we found a person in China and how we picked the game's Chinese name. The video is in Russian, and you can switch YouTube to the English dub track.

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At launch we had just 21 sales from China, for a laughable amount of money. Here is the picture now:

• 330 sales;
• 0.4% of the game's total sales (it was 0.1%);
• $1,087 in revenue;
• $575 will reach our account after tax;
• $486 goes to the person on our team who did this work.

Well then! At least we ended up in the black.

Why I'm still happy with China

Honestly, I count the result as a positive one. We now have contact with Chinese bloggers, and promoting our next games through them will be easier. We also started something like a blog there, where we post about Meltopia from time to time.

Next we will keep writing to bloggers and running small experiments. I expect the profit to grow.

Selling your game on GOG: a front-page feature and $800-900 in 4 days

In early September Meltopia came out on GOG, and the store put us in a feature on its front page right away. We had already been through free storefront exposure on Steam during the demo festival: how we prepared the Meltopia demo for Steam Next Fest and what it gave us, I covered separately, and how Meltopia's wishlists grew before launch is in the article on Steam wishlists: how many you need before launch and where they come from.

In its first 4 days the game made roughly $800-900 net. How much of the revenue a store keeps and what reaches the developer in the end, I calculated step by step in the article on how much Steam takes from a game sale.

Not a lot, but not nothing either. For us it is one more small stream of money that simply did not flow before. Two more stores left to figure out: Humble and the Epic Games Store.

Key stores

At the same time, over a month we signed 4 stores that sell keys. We expect them to bring up to 10% of the game's revenue. Whether that actually works, I don't know yet; we'll see from the numbers. Usually a publisher handles negotiations with stores and partners like these and takes a share of revenue for it. What a publisher does and what it costs, I covered in the article on whether an indie game needs a publisher, but here we do everything ourselves.

Where to sell indie games besides Steam: the bottom line

All these small streams are part of preparing for our next launches, Clear the Snow and Silicone Heart. I want us to launch with a whole set of streams at once that add up to a river. The channels we are setting up on Meltopia now, the new games will get from day one.

If you look at China as a money result, it is laughable. If you look at it as building a system that will later bring sales of new games, it is not bad. GOG and keys follow the same logic: one game shows whether a channel works, and it starts making money on the next ones.

On one hand, $89 for a whole summer sounds funny; on the other, now there is a system. What do you think, was it worth it? And if you have already taken your own game to China, tell me how it went for you.

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